Mandrake Linux is excellent

[craiggiles]

Just a little message to all you scepticts out there with your crappy windows pc's.
If your thinking of moving over to linux do it you wont regret it!!!
I have just switched from windows 98 to Mandrake Linux V9.0 Powerpack and im not looking back.
Although its been a up hill struggle im finally getting to grips with it and within the week ive been using it its not crashed once while my other pc with XP on it has crashed several times (got to keep it cos of work:( ).
Just go for it and u'll be rewarded!!!

[advanR]

i used 8.2 for a while. i kind of liked it, but the RPM installs were hell. i just tried 9.0 a few months ago, and it had much more bloat and was less stable than 8.2

had been using slackware for months after that. I am going to reinstall slackware 8.1 on my new harddrive soon, and maybe try debian or gentoo later. I have the space.............

[craiggiles]

what ever distro you get dont get SuSE unless you like to reinstall everything!!!!!!!!

I havent had any problems at all with mdk version 9.0 its great and 100000000000000000000000000000 times better than w**dows

(thats alot of noughts)

[arioch]

what makes RPM bearable with Mandrake is URPMI. It's the bomb.
both 8.2 and 9.0 are nice pieces of work.

[sasKuatch]

I don't know why people say Mandrake is bloatware. I can't speak for the current release, but I have 8.1 installed, and after some tweaking and running Openbox (close to Blackbox for those who don't know), it's only using ~30mb of RAM (actually, 34 if you count in gtop).

That might be enourmous for somebody who has 32 mb of ram in their system, but some people say that other "lean" distros only use 80mb.

I say it all depends on tweakage.

[Zoist]

Damn. I think Mandrake is a bit of a shocker. I installed version 7.x and changed some option in the system and the PC wouldn't start. Plus a number of apps crashed and I thought the whole system was unstable. They do add a lot of unstable software as far as I know, so I couldn't recommend it to be a stable system.
That was version 7 something, but I am not sure much would have changed. Unlike other distros which are a lot more careful to what they include in their distros, Mandrake don't care much about that area as far as I know.

[hop-frog]

Originally posted by Zoist
Damn. I think Mandrake is a bit of a shocker. I installed version 7.x and changed some option in the system and the PC wouldn't start. Plus a number of apps crashed and I thought the whole system was unstable. They do add a lot of unstable software as far as I know, so I couldn't recommend it to be a stable system.
That was version 7 something, but I am not sure much would have changed. Unlike other distros which are a lot more careful to what they include in their distros, Mandrake don't care much about that area as far as I know.

7.x is really old. I started using Mandrake 8.0 two years ago and even then 8.0was considered old. Now they are up to version 9.

[CMonster]

what ever distro you get dont get SuSE unless you like to reinstall everything!!!!!!!! What works for some doesn't work for others.

I have SuSE 8.1 Professional installed on 3-PCs and my laptop and not a bit of problem except for having to install in safe setting mode on one PC because the motherboard didn't support SuSE's version of APIC -Best Linux yet and SuSE has better hardware support "out-of-the-box/off-the-shelf" than does Mandrake 9.0 -Two examples of this are the inclusion of the latest HP printer driver, giving excelent photo quality, and the support of more wireless PCMCIA cards.

[Zoist]

Why do you want 3 PCs? I have one which is more than enough.

[CMonster]

Why do you want 3 PCs? I have one which is more than enough.

-actually we have a bit more than that in house, I count 10:

*1)dualie Athlon server,
*4) 1.1-1.4Ghz PC Boxes,
*1)650mhz PC Box (9-year olds'),
*2) 1-1.4Ghz+ Laptops,
*1)300mhz Laptop (9-year olds'),
*1) beautiful new 1Ghz G4 17" iMac (yes, the one that looks like a lamp)

1. One for each member of the family, which allows for simultaneous use and surfing

2. Plenty of hardware for network projects -this has been particularly useful for my son during his communications study at DeVry University (he will graduate in about 3-weeks with a bachelor's in telecommunications :) )

3. Experimentation --great for testing the waters on an OS before deployment in a production environment -if you happen to burn-down a box, the word "format" can retain a friendly connotation.

4. Power -extra power for those resource intensive video, graphics, or sound operations without tying up the "fun" machines.

5. Laptops -everybody needs computing on the go :)

Did I mention 5 printers? hehehe....

[Zoist]

All you need now is an Internet fridge :)http://justlinux.com/forum/images/icons/icon14.gif

[craiggiles]

Wow 10 pc's,
I only have 2 :( !

And mandrake version 9 has absolutley no stabilty problems when you compare it with w**dows, but it may not be the most stable linux distro, but in my opinion its by far the best and easiest to use!

And why is it that new linux distro's need stupid hardware requirements like red hat needs 128mb of ram for a graphical desktop and recommends 192mb!!!!!!!
While mandrake only needs 64mb!!!!!!
Mad eh when you think in most circumstances most people experiment with linux on older PC's with lower specs like myself on a Compaq Deskpro Intel Celeron 300mhz, 3gb HDD, 64mb of ram.

[Zoist]

I would have thought Mandrake would be a memory hog.....

[CMonster]

And why is it that new linux distro's need stupid hardware requirements like red hat needs 128mb of ram for a graphical desktop and recommends 192mb!!!!!!!

The answer to that is in the question: graphical desktop -now keep in mind that Mandrake will also run better with these requirements met. Most any Linux can be striped down to run with far -far- less. But if you want to experience all that Linux can do with a full range of graphical user applications, you've got to have the hardware power to go along with it -otherwise it would be like trying to install WinXP Pro on a 133mhz w/32MB -if that were possible. Also keep in mind that default out-of-box Linux kernels are often optimized for Pentium586 and above, and will not even install on a 486 -Mandrake was one of the first to do this.